The recent municipal elections in Telangana have established the fact that the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), headed by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, is an invincible force in the state and no opposition party is anywhere nearer to it.
It was totally a one-sided battle with the TRS winning more than 110 municipalities and all the 10 municipal corporations across the state, leaving the opposition Congress and BJP struggle for survival.
Now, the question is which of these two opposition parties are going give some competition to the TRS, if not dreaming of coming to power.
Going by the results in the municipal elections, the BJP gave a tough fight to the TRS compared to the Congress party.
In 2014, the BJP, despite having an alliance with the Telugu Desam Party, had won only 167 wards. This time, the BJP contested on its own and won as many as 240 wards and 80 divisions. It could establish its presence in 71 municipalities and seven corporations.
In 60 per cent of the municipalities, the BJP could win at least one seat. Even in KTR’s stronghold of Siricilla, the BJP opened its account with four seats. In around 400 wards and 200 divisions, the BJP stood second.
In terms of voting, while TRS had secured 1.63 lakh votes and stood at the top, the BJP stood second with 75,562 votes and the Congress finished poor third with 72,123 votes.
However, what the BJP is projecting is only the voting pattern in urban areas. The party performed very poorly in the gram panchayat, mandal parishad and zilla parishad elections, compared to the Congress party.
In the assembly elections, too, the Congress fared much better than the BJP. It clearly showed that in the rural areas, the Congress is still the next best choice for the voters after the TRS.
In any case, neither the Congress nor the BJP is likely to pose a big challenge to the TRS, going by their present strengths, unless something dramatic happens in the TRS and also a national level political scenario.